Organizational Media Futures is a blog on the evolving nature of media technologies and organizational change. Students and faculty contribute to this blog as members of the Cal State East Bay Media Futures Group, a nonprofit think tank emphasizing foresight as a critical tool for creating sustainable initiatives local and global.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Robert Liu: Chapters 2,3

Chapter 2

The part that grabbed my attention most is the ‘information-transfer’ part at the beginning of the chapter. Being a communication major I am aware of what communication is and I, hopefully, have a good idea of how it should be done to send messages appropriately. The part I found most interesting on this topic was the miscommunication aspect and the factors that lead to information overload. While at my job a few years back I feel as if I were guilty for giving information overload to my employees. I notice that when I get stressed out I tend to expect more and a short manner of time, therefore when assigning a task I definitely said a lot, said it fast, and I’m pretty sure it was extremely complex. At the end of it all the task would not get done to its potential. I wish I knew ‘strategic control’ because if I did I think I would be able to communicate the bigger picture to my employees rather than stressing out on the particulars. By doing this I think they would have a better understand of the task and be more confident in completing it.

Chapter 3

Chapter 3 basically goes over how organizations and communication got together and started. The part that mainly grabbed my attention was resistance to domination in the classical management approach. Nobody likes to be dominated or taken advantage of, therefore if a person feels like he/she is being mistreated that person would absolutely resist it. This reminds me of an incident that occurred in my first retail job. I was a sales associate with 2 direct managers above me. At times they would some instances of miscommunication and would tell me to do 2 different things at different times of the day. While I am finishing one project the other manager would tell me to do that same project in a different way. Ultimately I resisted that type of domination by choosing to do what I decided to be best. At the end of it all it worked out because I explained to both of them why I did it and they understood as well as telling them to practice better communication habits.